[...]
It could. I have already heard from people how SUSE used to be a
great KDE distro and then Novell pushed GNOME and whatever and they
went elsewhere. And SUSE used to be an outstanding KDE distribution
and I think it still is, it's just that we ourselves (=SUSE) don't
seem to point that out recently.

But openSUSE is also a great GNOME distribution - how can we point out
properly that openSUSE has both?

We could make down-sized screenshots as buttons to choose from, side by
side --- or a mosaic of several of them.

That would make it simpler for users to decide.

In an installed system these screenshots could also provide a link to
the project home page, so you can make a better informed decision if you
want to change things.

Btw I think small screenshots and a link to the project home page would
be a way cool thing in a package manager anyway, but that's another
story.

If we go down such a route, openSUSE as a distribution becomes a
platform for all major desktops.

The supporters of each desktop elect a representative screenshot by a
specific date (e.g. beta4). That's what goes in.

And then the users 'vote'.

Btw, do we gather information on what's actually been used? One of the
numbers in Michaels post was a 2:1 split KDE:GNOME in 11.1.

That means to make 2/3 of the users a tad happyer, we make 1/3 of the
users feel second class.

I doubt setting a default will really help to grow the openSUSE user
base or Linux growth in general.